Travel Guide Berrieux

Do not rely on the unruffled calm of these green hills, there is a deafening silence. The watched eye towards the horizon, the shouts ring at the visitor's ears, the bullets whistle. To take the Ladies Road is to start a devastating dive in history. So named because it was borrowed by Adelaide and Victory, daughter of King Louis XV, to reach the Château de la Bove, this 30 km ridge, 200 km above the Aisne valley and the River Blade, was the scene of bloody fighting. In 57 B.C. already, when the legions of Caesar defeat the populations of Northern Gaul. In 486, the last Roman governor, Syagrius, was defeated in the vicinity of Soissons by a frank young chef named… Clovis. Today, in memory, the bloody debacle of April 16, 1917, when, in order to end an interminable position war, Lance initiates a suicidal operation that leads to considerable losses. From Malmaison to the California plateau, we still learn a little more about the tragic destiny of these hills. One figure remains forever engraved in the memories: six hundred thousand, the number of French, German, British, American and Italian soldiers who fell on the flanks of these hills during the four years of conflict. Only half of them could be identified.